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Soccer fans will chuckle, but Demetriou's not laughing

Richard Hinds

THE thought of AFL boss Andrew Demetriou - or, more likely, his successor - having to run the nation's strongest domestic football competition from his back shed because his Etihad Stadium office had been requisitioned by FIFA for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup will give soccer zealots a chuckle.

Particularly those who believe the AFL's aggressive stance on plans for stadium use during the World Cup makes them saboteurs who are putting the World Cup bid at risk with their inflammatory rhetoric.

Demetriou's latest claim that the AFL might have to cancel its season if the MCG is not available for the four months required to convert it to a rectangular stadium was fuelled by frustration about lack of information from Football Federation Australia.

Such frustration is understandable given the AFL, whose supporters have heavily subsidised the MCG's costly redevelopments, heard about the ground's possible reconfiguration - downplayed by the FFA yesterday - only during discussions with Melbourne Cricket Club officials. Information from the FFA has been, the AFL claims, confusing, contradictory or simply non-existent.

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This has left the AFL wondering if a) The FFA's planning is so poor it is still uncertain about key points such as where and when the AFL and NRL would be allowed to play games during the World Cup or b) The FFA is being deliberately obtuse in the belief the Federal Government will legislate to force other codes and ground operators to comply to any orders should the bid succeed.

It was this mindset that led to Demetriou's dire warning - at least for his southern faithful - that without the MCG, the AFL season might be scrapped. While it came with the usual conciliatory premise - ''We support the World Cup bid, but …'' - this threat of season-long football deprivation was a call to arms.

''How much do you want this World Cup?'' Demetriou was asking his constituents. ''Enough to miss an entire footy season?''

But if Demetriou's sabre rattling is understandable given the commercial stakes and the FFA's lack of detail, it is not without risk. The Socceroos - and, by extension, the World Cup - are Australian sport's new Bambis. A besotted Federal Government that seems as enamoured by sport's electoral feel-good factor as previous regimes will not thank Demetriou for putting the bid in the cross-hairs.

And, if a few AFL diehards might have bristled at Demetriou's no-footy warning, far more are beguiled by the notion of Nicole Kidman's ''no worries World Cup''. They are excited by the international spotlight, the tourism boost, the stadium redevelopments and, most of all, by the six-week orgy of top-flight sport and partying the Copa Mundial brings.

Sold on the contentious notion that there is ''room for all four codes'' in Australia's tiny market, you suspect most fans neither know nor care about the savvy ulterior motive for the FFA's bid - accelerating the growth of its game at a rate that would be impossible without the massive exposure and government patronage a home World Cup would guarantee.

In that regard, the AFL and NRL would be negligent if they did not consider the World Cup a Trojan Horse from which an aggressive enemy will spring. This is not treachery, just Business 101.

Similarly, they would be asleep at the wheel if they did not seek as much information as possible about how their own competitions will be inconvenienced. The AFL was bemused to learn that visiting soccer officials and journalists were being taken on a tour of Etihad Stadium where they had been expecting to play games during the World Cup - and where the stadium's private owners say they don't want World Cup games because they will lose too much revenue.

But while the AFL might win some concessions with its public posturing - perhaps by ensuring an inevitable mid-season break lasts only six weeks - the government patronage and public groundswell for the Cup will ensure resistance is futile. In all likelihood, AFL will quite literally be banished from its offices for the duration.

Then some emboldened soccer fans could say what they have long thought: that compared with the glory of the rest-of-the-world's game, the AFL really is just a backyard operation.